LITMIR.BIZ

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Verity.’ I lifted my glass and sipped from it. Apple wine. From Farrow, I guessed. Probably part of the wedding gifts. ‘So what does Regal gain?’

      Rurisk eyed his wine with distaste, and set it aside. He took my glass from my hand. He drank from it. There was no shock in his voice as he said, ‘He’s rid of you. I gather he does not value your company. He has been very gracious to me, extending many gifts to me as well as to my kingdom. But if I were dead, Kettricken would be left sole heir to the Mountain Kingdom. That would benefit the Six Duchies, would it not?’

      ‘We cannot protect the land we already have. And I think Regal would see it as benefiting Verity, not the kingdom.’ I heard a noise outside the door. ‘That will be Cob, coming to catch me in the act of poisoning you,’ I surmised. I rose, went to the door, and opened it. Kettricken pushed past me into the room. I closed the screen quickly behind her.

      ‘He’s come to poison you,’ she warned Rurisk.

      ‘I know,’ he said gravely. ‘He put it in my wine. That’s why I’m drinking his.’ He refilled the glass from the carafe, and offered it to her. ‘It’s apple,’ he cajoled when she shook her head.

      ‘I don’t see any humour in this,’ she snapped. Rurisk and I looked at one another and grinned foolishly. Smoke.

      Her brother smiled benignly. ‘It’s like this. FitzChivalry realized tonight he is a dead man. Too many people have been told he is an assassin. If he kills me, you kill him. If he doesn’t kill me, how can he go home and face his king? Even if his king forgives him, half the court will know he’s an assassin: that makes him useless. Useless bastards are a liability to royalty.’ Rurisk finished his lecture by draining the rest of the glass.

      ‘Kettricken told me that even if I killed you tonight, she would still pledge to Verity tomorrow.’

      Again, he was not surprised. ‘What would she gain by refusing? Only the enmity of the Six Duchies. She would be forsworn to your people, a great shame to our people. She would become outcast, to the good of no one. It would not bring me back.’

      ‘And would not your people rise up at the thought of giving her to such a man?’

      ‘We would protect them from such knowledge. Eyod and my sister would, anyway. Shall a whole kingdom rise to war over the death of one man? Remember, I am Sacrifice here.’

      For the first time, I dimly understood what that meant.

      ‘I may soon be an embarrassment to you,’ I warned him. ‘I was told it was a slow poison. But I looked at it. It is not. It is a simple extract of deadroot, and actually rather swift, if given in sufficient quantity. First, it gives a man tremors.’ Rurisk extended his hands on the table, and they trembled. Kettricken looked furious with both of us. ‘Death follows swiftly. And I expect I am supposed to be caught in the act and disposed of along with you.’

      Rurisk clutched at his throat, then let his head loll forward on his chest. ‘I am poisoned!’ he intoned theatrically.

      ‘I’ve had enough of this,’ Kettricken spat, just as Cob tore the door open.

      ‘’Ware treachery!’ he cried. He went white at the sight of Kettricken. ‘My lady princess, tell me you have not drunk of the wine! This traitorous bastard has poisoned it!’

      I think his drama was rather spoiled by the lack of response. Kettricken and I exchanged looks. Rurisk rolled from his chair onto the floor. ‘Oh, stop it,’ she hissed at him.

      ‘I put the poison in the wine,’ I told Cob genially. ‘Just as I was charged to do.’

      And then Rurisk’s back arched in his first convulsion.

      The blinding realization of how I had been duped took but an instant. Poison in the wine. A gift of Farrow apple wine, probably given this very evening. Regal had not trusted me to put it there, but it was easy enough to accomplish, in this trusting place. I watched Rurisk arch again, knowing there was nothing I could do. Already, there was the spreading numbness in my own mouth. I wondered, almost idly, how strong the dose had been. I had only had a sip. Would I die here, or on a scaffold?

      Kettricken herself understood, a moment later, that her brother was truly dying. ‘You soulless filth!’ she spat at me, and then sank down at Rurisk’s side. ‘To lull him with jests and smoke, to smile with him as he dies!’ Her eyes flashed to Cob. ‘I demand his death. Tell Regal to come here, now!’

      I was moving for the door, but Cob was faster. Of course. No smoke for Cob this night. He was faster and more muscular than I, clearer of head. His arms closed around me and he bore me down to the floor. His face was close to mine as he drove his fist into my belly. I knew this breath, this scent of sweat. Smithy had scented this, before he died. But this time the knife was in my sleeve and very sharp and treated with the swiftest poison Chade knew. After I put it into him, he managed to hit me twice, good solid punches, before he fell back, dying. Goodbye, Cob. As he fell I suddenly saw a freckly stable-boy saying, ‘Come along now, there’s some good fellows.’ It could have gone so many different ways. I had known this man; killing him killed a part of my own life.

      Burrich was going to be very upset with me.

      All those thoughts had taken but a fraction of a second. Cob’s outflung hand had not struck the floor before I was moving for the door.

      Kettricken was even faster. I think it was a brass water-ewer. I saw it as a white burst of light.

      When I came to myself, everything hurt. The most immediate pain was in my wrists, for the cords that knotted them together behind my back were unbearably tight. I was being carried. Sort of. Neither Rowd nor Sevrens seemed to care much if parts of me dragged. Regal was there, with a torch, and a Chyurda I didn’t know leading the way with another. I didn’t know where I was, either, except that we were outdoors.

      ‘Is there nowhere else we can put him? No place especially secure?’ Regal was demanding. There was a muttered reply, and Regal said, ‘No, you are right. We do not want to raise a great outcry right now. Tomorrow is soon enough. Not that I think he will live that long.’

      A door was opened and I was flung headlong to an earthen floor barely cushioned by straw. I breathed dust and chaff. I could not cough. Regal gestured with his torch. ‘Go to the Princess,’ he instructed Sevrens. ‘Tell her I will be there shortly. See if there is anything we can do to make the Prince more comfortable. You, Rowd, summon August from his chambers. We will need his Skill, so that King Shrewd may know how he has succoured a scorpion. I will need his approval before the bastard dies. If he lives long enough to be condemned. Go on, now. Go.’

      And they left, the Chyurda lighting their way for them. Regal remained, looking down on me. He waited until their footfalls were distant before he kicked me savagely in the ribs. I cried out wordlessly, for my mouth and throat were numb. ‘It seems to me we have been here before, have we not? You wallowing in straw, and me looking down on you, wondering what misfortune had brought you into my life? Odd, how so many things end as they begin.

      ‘And so much of justice is a circle, also. Consider how you fall to poison and treachery. Just as my mother did. Ah, you start. Did you think I did not know? I knew. I know much you do not think I know. Everything from the stench of Lady Thyme to how you lost your Skill when Burrich would no longer let you tap his strength. He was swift enough to abandon you, when he saw it might otherwise cost him his life.’

      A tremor shook me. Regal threw back his head and laughed. Then he gave a sigh and turned. ‘A pity I cannot stay and watch. But I have a princess to console. Poor thing, pledged to a man she already hates.’

      Either Regal left then, or I did. I am not clear. It was as if the sky opened up and I flowed out into it. ‘Being open,’ Verity told me, ‘is simply not being closed.’ Then I dreamed, I think, of the Fool. And of Verity, sleeping with his arms wrapped around his head, as if to keep his thoughts in. And of Galen’s voice, echoing in a dark, cold chamber. ‘Tomorrow is better. When he Skills now, he scarce has any sense of the room he sits in. We do not have enough bond for me to do this from a distance. A

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